


soon the duet

by loyaulte_me_lie



Series: the heart is a muscle [5]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Adoption, Bittersweet, Enjolras & Combeferre's Daughter, Family, Gen, Magic AU, Modern AU, bereavement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-20
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-05-15 05:58:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19289575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loyaulte_me_lie/pseuds/loyaulte_me_lie
Summary: will become a trio! // Enjolras and Combeferre unexpectedly become fathers.





	soon the duet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PieceOfCait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PieceOfCait/gifts).



> Happy birthday to Cait and her family!! Sorry that this is probably less fluffy than I hoped, but I hope you're all having a fantastic week :D Title from "The Lonely Goatherd" from The Sound of Music.
> 
> Just warnings for bereavement.

**May 2011 | Toulouse**

“Right, okay. Okay. We’ll be there as soon as possible,” Combeferre says, feeling the shake in his voice.

“Alright. See you soon, Monsieur,” the man on the end of the phone says, and the call disconnects. Combeferre keeps holding the phone to his ear for a moment, then drops it. It bounces off the sofa cushion and onto the floor, but Combeferre can’t find it within himself to care. Emmanuelle, his big sister, with her bright smile and her infectious laugh and the sharp edges you never saw coming until they were flaying you open in some debate or other, Emmanuelle is…

He hears the sound of the key in the lock, Enjolras hanging up his coat and dropping his bag by the door. After a moment he appears in the doorway to their tiny sitting room, blonde hair rain-damp and curling out of its ponytail, face tired.

“This storm is,” Enjolras starts, and then cuts himself off. “What’s wrong?”

There is a rush of worried energy. For Combeferre, worry has always tasted like menthol, like a sore throat - lingering, aching, the strange taste in your mouth you get from too many lozenges. He tries to find the words. Enjolras quickly crosses the room, kneels at his feet, takes his hands, fingers running over his knuckles, waiting. It’s one thing Combeferre loves so much about Enjolras, loves that for all his fierce conviction and argumentativeness, he never pushes, will always wait quietly for someone to gather their courage or their feelings.

“Emmanuelle,” Combeferre starts, takes a deep breath through the sudden pain swelling in his chest like a wave, “Emmanuelle and Robert were in a car crash, and they’re…they’re dead.”

Enjolras’ face is very blank for a second and then he exhales, long and slow. The controlled energetic wave of his shock feels like the tide coming in. “What about Marianne?”

“She survived. The baby-seat protected her, god, they’ve got her at the hospital. They want someone to come and collect her and I’m obviously the only one in the country so I’m the emergency contact and…” Combeferre feels the painful lump of tears sitting solidly at the base of his throat, swallows and swallows. Enjolras is looking at him with the sort of endless gentleness no-one but those he’s close to think he’s capable of.

“Love,” he says, very gentle. “Come here.”

Combeferre slides off the sofa and into an embrace, feels Enjolras’ arms close around him. He presses his face into Enjolras’ shoulder, lets the tears come. Enjolras is quiet, very carefully stroking his back, just holding him, and all he can think about is his sister and brother-in-law, gone, just like that. Just like that. His little niece, barely two months old, who will never know her parents. After a while, he pulls away, takes off his glasses to wipe his eyes, takes a breath, and another. Enjolras still has one of his hands, waits.

“We need to go and collect Marianne,” he says, his voice cracking. “And I need to phone my parents, my brother.”

“Okay,” Enjolras says, quiet. “Let’s go get her first. I’ll go get your coat and shoes, stay there.”

 

**

The hospital smell makes Combeferre want to gag, and he wonders at the fact he’d planned on becoming a doctor, when he was a teenager, is glad he opted for the Doctor of Philosophy instead. The corridors are fluorescent, cold, smell astringent, and the energy landscape is roiling, getting under his skin. Enjolras has hold of his hand - _people can make whatever assumptions they choose,_ he’s said more times than Combeferre can count throughout their long years of friendship - and after a moment, the energy quiets, as though someone has thrown up a perspex wall, keeping it on the outside. Combeferre can still see the faint shadow of it, feel it dully in his mouth, but the impact no longer stings, no longer makes him want to throw up. He squeezes Enjolras’ hand in thanks. Shields are neither of their speciality.

They wait at reception for a nurse, who takes them down to the office in which Marianne is being kept. She’s in a crib, awake, wriggling around. Combeferre’s knees lock.

“Come on, darling,” the nurse says, picking her up with practised ease. “Here’s your uncle, come to take you home you brave little girl.”

Marianne is deposited neatly into Combeferre’s arms, and she blinks up at him for a moment and then bursts into tears, her face screwing up in misery. Combeferre feels himself start to cry too, tries to hold it back, but Marianne is flailing as much as a tiny two-month old is apparently capable of, and he can’t stop thinking of Emmanuelle, dead, and then Enjolras is there, thank _god,_ and taking Marianne away, saying something to the nurse. Combeferre tries to pull himself together, but it’s no use, it’s all too much, and he sags against the desk, tries to focus on breathing. In and out. In and out. He can’t do this, he can’t let go, not now.

He gathers what remains of his composure after a while and wipes his face, turning to Enjolras who has Marianne carefully cradled in his arms, is talking to her in the slightly stern, lecturing voice he used to use on Cosette when they were all children. Marianne has quieted, has a piece of blonde hair clasped tightly in her fist, is staring up at Enjolras though he’s the most fascinating thing she’s ever seen.

“Now then,” Enjolras is saying, “there’s a good girl. I know you’ve had a horrible fright, but you’re going to be fine. We’ll keep you safe.”

He looks up and meets Combeferre’s eyes, and Combeferre goes over leans against Enjolras’ shoulder and looks down into Marianne’s face, her bright eyes, her tiny nose, the bubble of spit she’s blowing, tries not to think.

Later, at Enjolras’ parents house, after he’s phoned his parents and Emmanuelle’s twain and cried some more, he’s sitting on the sofa with Enjolras in the half-dark of their living room. The lamplight pools and folds around them like a piece of golden cloth. Javert calmly sorted out a nursery, and he and Valjean took Marianne upstairs to give her a bath and put her to bed. Enjolras’ parents are a godsend.

“We have to talk to my parents,” he says, after a moment, the thought slipping into his brain. “But, I don’t know. How would you feel if we decided to keep Marianne, here. With us.”

Enjolras reaches over, and takes his hand. Combeferre continues: “I know we’re still so young, and all, but we’ve got income and the apartment, and I can take a year out of my PhD, I’m sure I can swing it, and then your parents are here and Cosette’s coming back from university soon, and…”

“We’ll have to make a lot of practical plans,” Enjolras says.”It’s a big undertaking. And won’t your parents want to have custody?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to talk to them. But Emm…” a breath, “Emmanuelle stayed in France because she wanted to raise Marianne here, mostly. And my parents are happy in Dakar, and they’re getting old, and they’ve got Robert’s kids, and all of Patrice’s various children and grandchildren to spoil…”

Enjolras is still looking at him, running his fingers over the skin of Combeferre’s wrist.

“And you want a piece of Emmanuelle,” Enjolras says, eventually.

“I can keep her safe, yes.”

“You know it’s not your fault. It couldn’t be your fault.”

“Logically, yes,” Combeferre dips his head, stares at his knees, tries to breathe again. “Logically…”

“Unless you can control all of the energy produced by all of the cars in the city all of the time, there was literally nothing you could have done, Yves,” Enjolras’ voice is very steady. He must be grieving too, Combeferre thinks. He and Emmanuelle hung out sometimes, talking historical politics and Emmanuelle’s work with the local homeless shelter. They got on. They were all like one big family, growing up, the three Senegalese Combeferre children and blonde-haired blue eyed René Enjolras and Cosette Valjean, running around the city in a pack chattering in an excited mixture of French, Wolof, and whatever languages they’d been learning at school. As the oldest, Emmanuelle had always been the one who’d liked to be in charge, the one who’d always come up with elaborate plans and games for them…

“Yves,” Enjolras says again, and Combeferre looks up. “It wasn’t your fault.”

There’s a rush of energy along with his words, comfort, like marshmallows, soft and slightly sweet.

“Okay,” Combeferre says, squeezes Enjolras’ hand. After a moment, Enjolras squeezes back.

*

“How do you feel about it?” Courfeyrac asks, his voice crackling down the phone. He’s recently moved to Edinburgh to study cryptozoology, which no-one who knows him was remotely surprised by - Courfeyrac is the walking embodiment of queer and owns it proudly. God forbid he do anything anyone consider ordinary. He’d come back for the funeral, and then had to head off again for some field trip in search of the Loch Ness Monster, which is apparently where he is now, sitting on a beach and monitoring equipment. “Like,” he continues, “I absolutely understand where Combeferre is coming from, and practically it makes the most sense, but I just wanted to check on you, you know? Because it’ll change things, it’ll no longer be just you and him, you know?”

“Yes,” Enjolras says, breathing out. He’s sitting in the windowseat of his childhood room, watching the sun dip gracefully behind the clouds, the twilight blue leaking over the horizon. “Yes, I know. I wasn’t expecting to be a father ever, really, let alone this young.”

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” Enjolras shrugs, knows that Courfeyrac will hear the gesture in his voice. “You know I’m not very good at telling how I feel, so…”

“Yes that’s why you have me.”

Enjolras huffs a laugh. “Yes, it is rather. I suppose I’ll find out how I feel about it as we go.”

“If you were anyone else I’d be worried by a statement like that, just putting that out there.”

“You know it’s the best I can do.”

“Yep, hence the reason for “if you were anyone else.”” Fathers, eh? What’ll she call you?”

“I think I’ll be Dad. Combeferre wants to be Pops. He says we’re going to be her parents, not just her guardians, so it makes the most sense, and certainly for me it’ll make life easier because I’m obviously not biologically related. But I think it’ll be good in the fact I’ll be able to see any of the challenges same-sex couples face as parents first hand, hopefully be able to get something done, too.”

“Only you,” Courfeyrac says. “Adopt a daughter, use it to keep fighting the good fight. I’m so curious to see what she turns out like.”

“Hopefully a functioning, healthy, happy adult.”

“An enormous social justice warrior who becomes president by the time she’s thirty-seven, more like,” Courfeyrac jabs, “I know what both of you are like. It’s going to be hilarious.”

“Says the man two thousand miles away from dirty nappies and whatever other disgusting things infants do,” Enjolras says, without heat.

“Oh yeah, I know. Uncle Courf, that’s me, swanning in when things get interesting and leaving you two to deal with all the nasty.”

“You’re such a delight.”

“Why yes thank you, I’m well aware. Look I’ve got to go, there’s been a spike in this monitor and I should probably go investigate, but phone me whatever time you need me, you know that, right?”

“Of course. Have fun chasing the Loch Ness Monster.”

Courfeyrac does a mad, theatre-school laugh and hangs up the phone. Enjolras puts the phone down, stares at his knees, and then gets up, goes back over to the box of baby things from his parents’ attic that he was unpacking.

*

“And that’s it,” Enjolras says, sliding an arm around Combeferre’s waist and leaning against his side. They’re both standing over the crib in Marianne’s new room - the tiny closet-corridor joining their two bedrooms - watching her sleep. She’d gone down without much fuss, tonight. Valjean had shown them a few things, told them a few stories about Enjolras’ early days with him and Javert and Fantine, the sleepless nights, Fantine’s weirdly direct and magical way of getting baby Enjolras to do exactly what she wanted. “Are you alright?”

Combeferre exhales. It’s been a weird month, the weirdest of his life, and he is a scholar mage bound to the disgraced battle-mage son of the one of the outcasts of France’s mage society who also doubles as a social justice superhero, and he is best friends with someone who is learning how to be a crypto-zoologist because apparently the monsters really do exist. But then, he reasons, all of that is normal, in the parameters of his world. This is decidedly different. His parents flew in, as did Robert’s father, and they had the funeral, and then lots of talk about Marianne and what to do, and then his mad idea to adopt her, to keep her here, turned out to be the most sensible of the lot and now they’ve just baby-proofed the apartment and signed adoption papers and he’s spoken to his supervisor at the university and suddenly, _suddenly,_ he’s a father.

She makes a small snuffling sound in her sleep, brings a fist up to her mouth, and Combeferre feels his heart swell, tight and painful against his ribs. Emmanuelle might be gone, but by god is he going to make sure her daughter has the best childhood any kid could possibly hope for.

“I’m alright,” he says, quietly, turning to look at Enjolras’ face. Enjolras is looking down into the crib too, with the softest expression Combeferre has ever seen him wear. “Are you?”

Enjolras looks up and smiles into his eyes, one of those dazzling smiles that make his unsuspecting colleagues walk into walls. Mine, Combeferre thinks fiercely, for a moment. My family. _My family._ “Yes,” Enjolras whispers, looking back at the sleeping baby, _their_ sleeping baby. “Yes, me too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr with me: @barefoot-pianist.


End file.
